


Chancing Destiny

by tondratic



Category: Neverwinter Nights
Genre: Adventure, F/M, Gen, Mild Gore, Romance, general underdark shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:01:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27672404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tondratic/pseuds/tondratic
Summary: A failed adventurer and a successful kobold walk into a plot for world domination. But we'll get to that. First, let’s climb down a well, figure out what rhymes with “geas,” and explore the intricacies of Underdark cuisine.
Relationships: Valen Shadowbreath/Original Character(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	1. Welcome to the Yawning Portal Inn

Neph Crowthe hasn’t slept in an actual bed in months. She ran her fingers over the scratchy wool covers, the pointy down of the pillow. Sleep itself has become an elusive concept after a few days in the Plane of Shadow. At least, she thought it was days. The lack of any light source had made it hard to tell.

She ended up escaping by the skin of her teeth. The memories were... shrouded. She had clasped her hand onto something small and metallic, a signet ring, a ball bearing? And ended up face-first on a cold stone floor. Refreshingly, it wasn’t yet more coal cobblestone. This one was a tasteful shale.

“Welcome, Neph Crowthe, to the Realm of the Reaper,” a booming voice said.

Neph was slightly surprised to find herself dead so unceremoniously. She expected more pain, maybe a few choice images of her life, but none came.

And, to be frank, the room around her didn’t seem like the final destination for the departed. Namely, it was incredibly dull. A row of identical doorways surrounded a small dais upon which stood a winged, hooded figure. Compared to the massive expanses of shadow that had served as her home for the past... however long, this hardly seemed worth it. It was more like some sort of planar waiting room. Maybe purgatory, at best.

She wasn’t far off. The small, gem-encrusted object in her hand had kept her from dying. Or rather, transported her to a sort of interplanar hub once she did. She felt exactly like the Reaper’s description of his pocket plane; half in and half out and nowhere all at once. She didn’t catch much of the rumbled explanations in her haze, and picked a portal at random. Stepping back into a familiar world, she ended up in a field not far from a small farming town.

Trouble was, she no longer felt familiar to herself. A lifetime of being Drogan’s pupil was gone, lost in a botched rescue attempt. She had spent the next few weeks with not much else to do but tour the countryside, clearing goblin nests and demonstrating to a few local lords the importance of having an up-to-date security system by robbing them of a few choice trinkets.

Weird thing was, people recognized her. Strangers she had never met asked her to shake their hands, an admiration in their eyes Neph really didn’t think she deserved. When the call for help came from Waterdeep, a crowd of them had found her picking over her morning porridge, had thrust the leaflet in her hands and offered a free carriage ride to the city.

If she wasn’t what they saw, then was she anything?

The room in the Yawning Portal, while sparse, had solid oak furniture that had seen countless souls come and go. It reminded her of her student’s quarters, generations of starry-eyed adventurers rushing through them like water over a stone.

The complementary dagger under the pillow was a nice touch. She clasped it in her hand and, for the first time in a while, dreamt of something other than guilt and shadow. 

Instead, she had a prophetic dream about an attempt on her life. Not much of an improvement.


	2. Over the Underdark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neph tries to make a difference. Valen helps, reluctantly.

Neph’s new rooms were on the second floor of the Public House in Lith My’athar, and she could hardly tell that the place had been built by worshippers of the spider queen.

She shrugged off her cloak and tossed it on one of the wicked-looking hooks jutting out from the wall. A dark stone bowl sitting on eight sharp legs had been converted into a washbasin. Neph tried to ignore the rust-coloured stains of something that had once overflown from the lip of the bowl to its base.

Still better than Shadowfell.

She was surprised to find that a window had been left open, letting in a chill air from the Dark River. After a moment of gazing thoughtfully outside, she uncorked a potion, downed it, and vanished. A puff of dust spread on the windowsill. A couple of roof shingles rattled as if under a new weight.

One of Neph’s many philosophies was that learning about a city is best done from a bird’s eye view. People seldom looked up, though this didn’t seem to be the case for the Seer’s war camp. Citizens and soldiers alike glanced at shadows in the stalactites above as they went about their day, never traveling in groups of less than three.

The uncomfortable cohabitation of the followers of Eilistraee and - well, everyone else - was easy to map. It was as if a line had been drawn down the middle of the city. Two separate training grounds were marked on opposite ends, with two distinct training styles. The moves were the same; even the equivalent of heavy infantry danced through shadow and went for precision rather than might. But as Mae’vir soldiers tossed each other into harm’s way, clinging to any individual advantage, Imloth’s group moved as one united spot of darkness, breaking and reforming around the green monolith of the tiefling they were sparring with.

She’d have to watch out for that flail. And that tail. Valen was a whirlwind of steel, all-sharp, though she saw the restraint in his motions, and he had traded his two-headed monster of a weapon for a wooden equivalent.

In a lot of ways, he was a breath of fresh air, the only green speck in a sea of grey. She hadn’t had someone put her competence into question the way Valen did in a while; it was as if her internal monologue had grown horns and piercing blue eyes. Ironically, it helped. It was easy to concede to doubts that crept from within, but easier - and more fun - to work against them out of spite if they came from without.

She winced as three drow went flying from the impact of wood on steel.

Hopping down from the roof, she counted out the last remaining seconds of the potion and watched as her fingertips slowly materialized in front of her. It had taken her a while to get used to not being able to see what her body was doing. The first time she tried, she couldn’t stop shaking, nearly brought to tears. It had taken Dorna dumping a bag of flour on her to calm her down.

She was not by any means a master tactician or even a soldier, but even she could see that Imloth and Valen had the right idea. If your army can’t be bigger, it needs to be better. Or, at the very least, coordinated.

She meandered her way to the Mae’var training arena, chewing over a lesson plan.

* * *

Valen flipped a drow soldier on her back with a grunt, at once whipping his wooden flail behind him as another combatant attempted to slide a dagger through a slit in his armour.

The young man coughed from the impact to his side, hunching over and giving the tiefling an accusatory glare as he massaged his ribcage.

Valen glared at him.

"Strike from range next time," he said, barely out of breath as his five adversaries dusted themselves off in a loose circle around him. "I could have easily pushed her into your attack instead." Valen gestured at the woman he had just introduced to the concept of gravity as she muttered something he pointedly decided to ignore.

"Alright, that's enough for now!" Imloth said, stepping between Valen and the recruits. "Back to drills, everyone."

He drifted closer to Valen, feet completely silent on the dusty ground.

"You alright, old friend?" He asked. "You seem more... driven than usual. And that's saying something."

Valen's palms itched. He felt at once sharp and powerless; futile dissatisfaction swirling into a heady cocktail with his demonic blood. The fact that Imloth was looking at him knowingly did not help matters.

"Our troops are expected to win an impossible war at the command of a surfacer who is forced by a curse to cooperate." His tail flicked behind him. "So yes. I am driven. We need to strengthen what we have."

They both stood for a beat, observing the soldiers go through their paces.

"Well, breaking my trainees over your knee won't help them learn to survive any better," Imloth said. 

Valen rubbed a hand over his neck ruefully.

"And," Imloth continued, expression wry but gentle, "it may be that we'll be pleasantly surprised. The surfacer’s story _does_ have an uncanny resemblance to yours."

Valen glanced down at him, questioning.

Imloth spoke each sentence in time with his steps as he moved backwards from Valen to the recruits: "An outsider. A portal. A destiny."

Valen shook his head as he stalked back to the main streets. In his humble but entirely correct opinion, the people here put too much stock in fate and not enough in strict training regimen and secure supply lines.

He was about to take the turn towards the temple when he heard sounds of struggle from the Mae’var grounds. Not terribly unusual except for the laughter that was now piercing it.

He followed the sound to its source and found the newcomer - Neph, he reminded himself - gleefully dodging between three increasingly frustrated drow.

He took this time to observe her. Her opponents were precise as needles, but reckless and utterly uncoordinated; a fact she was using to full advantage. The Mae’var soldiers were used to delivering single, devastating attacks, and did not do well with an opponent who was on full alert.

In stark contrast to her goading, her movements were tight and controlled, not a one wasted, as she lured her would-be assassins to strike - only to parry the blow at the last second. Unlike the sly, shadowed movements of the drow, the half-elf stepped to and fro in a silent, rolling rhythm. A dance that led her past, around, beside, and just a little out of reach. To his surprise and slight relief, he found himself growing mildly impressed.

One of Neph’s opponents seemed to have caught onto her strategy, however. Valen watched as a drow matched pace with one of her comrades and made to strike out at Neph at the exact same moment, making parrying impossible. 

Valen moved without hesitation.

A metallic screech echoed in the courtyard as steel met steel. Valen caught the woman’s dagger on the handle of his flail and Neph parried the blow she was expecting off and away with her shortsword. She glanced over her shoulder at him, her brief look of shock quickly replaced by a grin.

The Mae’var soldiers around them seemed to shrink under Valen’s cold glare as Neph sheathed her weapons, glancing around triumphantly.

“And here is the lesson I was trying to teach you all,” she patted Valens arm, causing a clang as his armor plates shifted. “A friendly weapon at your back will stop that of an enemy’s.”

She looked at the woman who had just struck out at her.

“Matching your attack to your companion’s was good instinct. You should follow it, see where it leads.”

The drow soldier looked like she was about to tell the half-elf where she could stick her advice, but opted for a tense nod after Valen turned his eyes on her.

Neph dusted her hands off. “Well, let’s do this again sometime!” She nodded at the frowning Mae’var and beckoned for Valen to follow.

The two of them stepped away from the training grounds and towards the centre of town, the half-elf dropping her bombastic persona into simple relief as soon as they turned a corner. 

Valen’s persona dug itself deeper into vague annoyance.

“Phew, thanks for that. Really didn’t see her coming.”

He squinted at her. “What exactly were you trying to accomplish? Somehow I don’t think you actually figured my interruption into your curriculum.”

“No no, that was just some well-timed extra credit,” she stepped closer to Valen to make room for a rumbling cart, dancing away again once it passed. “I was trying to teach them the value of teamwork.”

Valen snorted. “You already have one impossible task ahead of you, I don’t suggest you pursue another.”

“You seem to have quite an effect on them,” she said, gazing up at him thoughtfully. “Even with how... pointy you are that can’t have been easy to achieve.”

Neph wondered if Valen’s face could ever be unpinched. Maybe with pliers. 

“It wasn’t.” He sighed. “Much as I hate to admit it, my approach to gain their respect was similar to yours.”

He could just _hear_ Imloth humming knowingly at him for that one.

“Though,” he smirked, “I did manage to get my point across without outside help.”

“Smugness isn’t a good look on you, Valen,” Neph laughed. “But I concede that in matters of combat you do have a slight edge on me.” She looked him up and then further up. “Give or take a few feet.”

Valen, who was used to conversation being directed at him from the level of his armpit, just shrugged. “Give or take.”


	3. Cavern Cuisine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team goes on a flavour journey.

Neph sucked in a breath through her teeth, hands scrambling madly within her pack. She was running out of options.

If she didn’t find a solution soon, things were going to get dire. A drop of sweat trickled down the side of her face. She might actually have to- to eat Underdark food.

Valen had hunted down… something… in a nearby cluster of boulders, and Neph didn’t think _anything_ needed that many legs. It was now either sizzling or squirming in the cast iron skillet, occasionally tossed into the air by an easy flick of Valen’s wrist.

Deekin didn’t seem to share any of her reservations. He sat near the fire, observing and peppering the tiefling with questions to which Valen occasionally grumbled a response.

Her hand closed upon a familiar jar: mint leaves. Not exactly food, but certainly something to help wash it down. She clutched it tighter in resolve.

“You is sure you keep that hard shell on? Deekin don’t mind, but Boss has soft teeth.”

Neph meandered closer to the fire. “It’s true. Bit down on a very stubborn lozenge one time and almost cracked a molar.”

Valen looked deadpan at her while his hand sprinkled something on the creature that made the flames turn blue. “My confidence in you grows by the hour. The shell comes off.”

“Ah, like lobster.”

“Sure.”

“You know what a lobster is?”

Valen shut his eyes, breathed deeply, and stood to walk over to his own pack.

“That’s a no.” She whispered loudly to Deekin. “You wanna draw him one?”

“On it, Boss!”

* * *

Neph picked a bit of dinner out of her teeth. It did, strangely enough, end up tasting like a slightly gritty lobster.

Deekin had garnished the meal with mushrooms that had passed Valen's thorough inspection. Neph felt pretty vindicated that she warned the kobold about the sparkly purple one when Valen snatched it out of his hands and lobbed it away from them, to have it explode in a burst of very worrying gas.

It looked like meals in the Underdark were going to be just as adventurous as the rest of it.

Besides being an excellent opportunity to annoy him, Neph genuinely did wonder how much of the surface world Valen actually got to see. Her guess was: not much.

She caught him looking at her curiously when she uncorked the tightly-packed mint leaves and scooped a few out into her mug.

She shook it cheerily at him.

"Wanna try?"

There was that wariness again. 

"Come on, only fair. You cook me a mystery from the depths, and I brew you one from up above."

"As long as it means I'll retain control of my faculties. The caves are a bad place to let down our guard."

Neph scoffed. 

"Please, Valen. I don't drink on the job. I'm a professional."

A wry disbelief passed over his face at that last sentence. Neph privately agreed.

The water came to a cheerful boil. She ladled some, bathing the leaves in it gently. Bright green notes of mint began wafting into the air around them and Neph had to gulp down on the nostalgia in her throat.

"Besides," she passed the tea into his outstretched hand, "the Seer didn't even put me on a tab."

Valen quirked an eyebrow at her, but then closed his eyes as he took in the aroma.

He brought the mug to his lips, blue eyes watching her over the rim, catching half-orange from the fire. Neph gestured a toast and took a dignified sip, Valen following suit.

As Valen lowered his drink, Neph's mind caught on a memory. His expression reminded her of when her neighbor's dog discovered a hedgehog and decided that the best way to address this new mystery was to stick its nose right into the quills. 

"Quite," he coughed, "quite strong. But… good. I don't think I have anything to compare it to."

Neph let out the first genuine laugh in weeks. Valen seemed startled. And a little flushed.

"We've got to find you something to compare with then," she said. "If we have nothing better to do when we win, I know a great place for flower picking."

"' _When_.'" Valen sighed the word so faintly she barely heard it. 

He looked up at her with something almost approaching friendliness. "I can honestly say I have no better plans for what comes after."

They shared a smile, and the tea that night warmed her up a little more than it normally did.


	4. Arrow? Is it me you're looking for?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neph considers the irony of luck and launches a last-ditch effort. Valen performs a peer review. Deekin takes notes.

Neph didn’t consider herself to be an unlucky person. She’d travelled the world — from sky castles to deepest Underdark caves — and met interesting people. But, as a second arrow lodged itself in her torso, she did begin to wonder if a truly lucky person would be in her position.

She slumped, partially against the wall and partially on Deekin, whom she was trying to push behind her with her good arm. The kobold was cursing violently — it warmed her heart to recognize a few choice words she taught him — and returning a volley of bolts at the drow assassins that had shot her.

Valen was tangled with a drider, whipping his flail along its legs until the creature buckled, bringing its face close enough so he could crack his horns against it, splitting its nose. As the drider stumbled back, stunned, Devil’s Bane cut through the air again and again, whipping arcs of ichor to the vaulted ceiling.

Neph couldn’t hear anything except the rumbling of her pulse. Her hand was slipping as she tried to grasp at a pocket in her armour, warm blood and her shaking fingers making it impossible to find purchase. This was frustrating, because she had just the scroll for the occasion before she was interrupted by little sticks moving very, very fast.

Green filled her vision and she felt her hand being pulled away. This was quite rude, since she was in the middle of something. Neph went to say as much, but the words turned into a sad gurgle of blood. The room around her spun and landed on its side and she was finding it difficult to breathe.

“Oh, Boss…"

Deekin put his little paws on either side of her head, his upside-down snout looking at her in concern. The kobold started humming and Neph's brain took a brief pause from saying _ow_ into thinking _aww_. The tune was soothing, so she closed her eyes. Just for a bit.

"Rest, Boss. We bring you right back!"

* * *

Valen didn't believe in luck, but he certainly believed in gods. He dearly wanted Eilistraee to drop down here so he could give her a lecture on choosing her Saviors responsibly. 

They'd moved Neph into a small chamber that joined the room where they fought the drow. It was cramped and stuffy, piled with crates and clearly meant for storage. 

A single table and chair stood near one wall. Deekin swiped away a stack of what looked like ledgers, and Valen placed Neph’s limp body on the dusty surface.

He then dragged a few heavy crates in front of the door before turning to assess the damage to his… leader? Future Hero of the Underdark?

She didn't look much like either right now, her body surprisingly small without her ego to inflate it. Her breaths were coming shallow and quick, pulse fluttering lightly as he shrugged off his gauntlets to check it.

Valen couldn't count how many times he'd been ripped out of the calm endlessness of death. Demonic healing had pounded the dents out of him from the inside, no painkillers behind the spells. The first time the Seer had gone to heal him, he'd tensed as if bracing his whole body for a punch… that never came. Instead, his wounds were bathed in gentle moonlight, the gaps in his flesh smoothed away as if sand under a gently fizzing wave.

He found he was genuinely sorry that he couldn't manage that gentleness here. The healing he knew was patchwork; scraps of cloth pulled taught between aching teeth in the chaos of battle.

Two arrows had struck her. One, still crackling with fading lighting, was in her shoulder, lodging itself to the bone. Faint smoke was curling from the singed circle where it pierced her cape.

The other lanced her side, relatively cleanly. He maneuvered her close to the edge of the table and could just see the tip of it peeking through her back and dripping blood.

Unusually for drow, there was no poison, far as he could tell. Small mercies.

They had plenty of healing potions, but Valen needed to get the arrows out first or the wounds would simply close around the shafts, leaving them sticking out of her like a pincushion. He imagined that Neph either wouldn't approve of this or would use it as an intimidation tactic. She was odd that way.

Deekin was back to hovering by Neph’s head as Valen took stock of the damage. The kobold was still droning the oddly soothing tune, and Valen had to shake his head clear of it.

"Can you keep her under while I take care of this?"

Deekin just shrugged and nodded slightly as he kept humming, as if to say: _sure will try, goatman_.

Valen started with the arrow in her side: snapped the shaft as short as he could, trimmed the tunic around the entry point with one of Neph's daggers, then braced the heel of his hand against the remaining wood.

Deekin never stopped his humming, but Valen could see Neph's eyes dart around blindly behind her eyelids, drops of sweat rolling down her face. Valen caught the kobold's eye and nodded.

 _Now_.

A shove, and the arrow cleared the rest of the way. Valen was rubbing a poultice over the empty wound before the point even clattered to the ground.

More clattering followed, just beyond the chamber. He and Deekin tensed.

It was the light _tik tik tik_ of drider legs.

Valen cursed in Abyssal — about the only thing he used that language for — and rushed to brace the door just as two scythe-like grey legs snapped through the seam between the door and the frame.

Valen’s mind had long ago untangled fear from danger. His thoughts darted around his terror with lightning speed to fetch back an assessment.

He was not much worse for wear but the kobold was wrung dry of magic. And he wouldn't even know where to start with Neph. If the driders got through, it would be a bloodbath.

"Get her up!" he shouted. 

Deekin cut the music, swung around, and launched a bolt into one of the spindly legs. It retreated with a shriek and a crunch of chitin, the other leg still scraping madly through the opening.

Neph gasped in pain as she was slammed back into consciousness. A bloated spider body slammed in answer against the door, the impact pushing Valen off briefly until he braced his shoulder against the barricade again.

"Shh—," Neph started, clutched at her side, and then said conclusively: " _Shit_."

"Hide," Valen bit out, ducking his head just as a leg punched through the wood above him.

Neph hissed in pain, sitting up. She eyed him blearily. "Everyone needs to stop interrupting me." 

Valen could see her clutching a blood-soaked parchment in her hand; she must have held onto it even after she fainted.

"You'll have to move," she mumbled, then began to read.

He watched, wide-eyed, as a dense red pinpoint of light gathered in her hand; a tiny speck that felt endlessly heavy. It lit Neph up from below, turning swipes of blood on her face into glittering rivers of lava.

He could see the bones through each of her fingers as she carefully curled them around the glowing sphere and pointed past him at the door.

Valen dove.

The door crashed open behind him, crates he had piled slamming into his side and shoving him away.

Two snarling, spitting driders made to push their way inside, their legs a kaleidoscope of sharp and cruel death.

A thin line shot from Neph’s finger and pierced through the first drider before hitting the second. It hung there, taught, then snapped like cheap thread.

There was a sound like a rasping intake of breath, and then there was no sound at all.

A deep red flower of light bloomed within their grey chests, swirling at first behind shadows of ribs, then consuming those too, until it had nowhere left to go. It burst.

Sound came rushing back all at once: a terrible shrieking replaced by wet thumps as chunks of flesh rained around them. Sharp legs clattered to the floor as if someone spilt a drawer of cutlery, the spider halves toppling and curling in on themselves.

There was a moment when she and Valen just looked at each other, covered in gore.

Then Deekin said, pointing at his own drider-covered face: "Boss, you have a little something riiight, right here."

Neph burst into laughter, and then decided to pass out again.

* * *

It was dark, like it always was lately. Grim and unchanging.

What Neph could feel filtered through her other senses: the clanking of metal plate, a medicinal taste in her mouth, and a clean, surgical pain where she remembered the arrows to be.

Her body was rocked in a steady, sure cadence, and then lowered, slowly, onto something relatively soft.

All in all, the sensations didn't match up with her last memory of boiling-red adrenaline. This was curious, so she decided to peek and see if there were any shapes in the darkness.

Rolling her head to the side, she saw the silhouette of a horned man and a kobold trying to set up a fire. She wondered if many other people would feel comforted when faced with this type of tableau, but it flooded Neph with a heady relief.

"Ha," she said. And then, when two heads turned to her: "It worked."

Deekin rushed to her immediately, while Valen stood slowly and dusted his hands from his work. Neph, a master at deserving and subsequently avoiding lectures, turned to the kobold instead.

"Deekin never seen you do anything like that, Boss!" he was already clutching his quill and notebook. "Can you explain what happened, for people at home?"

Neph sat up, gingerly, and found that the pain wasn't as bad as she expected. She put on a mien of a gracious — and insufferably smug — interviewee.

"Why of course, my friend," she brushed a bit of hair out of her face. It was stiff with blood. "I simply put together an amalgam of two classic spells: fireball and disintegrate and—"

"You _what?_ " Valen was looming over them now, his arms crossed.

She _really_ wasn't in the mood for this. She felt her face set into a rictus grin, in spite of herself.

"I was toying around with some scrolls. It was a side project," she said, then tilted her head towards her shortsword, as if listening. "The sword helped too. And look at that! It worked out great."

Valen pinched the bridge of his nose. "You set off a patchwork scroll… in an enclosed space… without knowing what it would do?"

"Yep. Got it in one."

The look he gave her was pained, which Neph didn’t think was fair considering she was the one who was peppered with arrows. Though she could see a bruise blooming across the side of his pale face, probably from being knocked back by the blast.

Something twisted in her gut at that.

Valen shook his head as he turned back to building the fire. She heard him mutter: "Maybe you _are_ blessed."

* * *

Dinner was awkward.

After Deekin had prodded her (and Enserric) for details about the incantation, he took to one corner of the cave they were camped in. The scratching of his pen and the crackling of the fire were the only things that broke the silence.

She glanced at Valen from the corner of her eye. His bruised side was facing her — he hadn't tended it, opting instead to pick bits of spider-drow out of his equipment.

"We should probably continue to push into the castle as soon as we can, tomorrow," she ventured.

"Mhm," followed by a splat as a piece of drider was flung from where it was caught in the plate.

"I've got a salve for the bruises," Neph pulled a small jar out of her pack and wiggled it in her hand as proof, though Valen wasn't looking at her.

"I'm fine."

Neph rolled her eyes. 'Strong and silent' wasn't really her type. She preferred 'strong and able to form full sentences.'

She cracked open the salve and, before she could think better of it, swiped a dab and reached forward to smear it on his cheek.

He snapped her hand out of the air, lightning-fast. Blue eyes stared into brown; peppery frustration almost tangible.

"How do you do it?"

"Huh?" she stared at him, caught off-balance. "Apply the cream? You just rub it on where it hurts."

He scoffed. "No."

Valen released her wrist and turned to face her, setting his armour aside. Neph, with her attack unsuccessful, wiped her hand on the edge of the container.

“Treat it like a story,” icicle eyes bored into her. “Like a joke.”

Neph resented that remark. She thought she was doing a rather bang-up job of taking her role as 'The Savior' in stride. With a lighthearted air. Better than the — very reasonable — alternative of collapsing in a ball of hysteria. 

“You fling idea after outlandish idea at every problem we come across, not seeming to care that what you do doesn’t just affect you and your lizard friend anymore.” There was an indignant squeak from the corner of the cave at the word ‘lizard,’ followed by more furious scratching of quill on parchment.

Valen dropped his eyes away from her, and Neph sagged as if unpinned.

“The maddening thing is… it usually works. Some blind luck or—," he gestured with his hands vaguely in the air, gazing upward.

It was then Neph realised just how _tired_ she was. Full of arrow holes, a geas tickling the back of her skull, palm of her right hand bubbling with burns from the last-ditch spell she threw.

She was _lucky_. Right.

"I'm taking it seriously."

"Because of Halaster—"

"No! Not because of him." and Neph was surprised to find that she meant what she said, for once. The geas was irritating, but in her gut she knew she would have stayed even without it. "And before you accuse me of faking altruism, it isn't even that, either."

What _was_ it, then? 

"It's—" Neph rubbed a hand over her mouth. "If I don't do everything I can to help them… I lose what I was made to be."

She could feel her fingers running over the lip of the jar. It was a vessel for healing, at least until the salve ran out. Without it? Empty shell.

"I'm making it personal," her eyes dug into his, now. "And if there's any part of me you can rely on, it's my selfishness. Take comfort."

Valen looked at her, expression pinched with that same assessing thoughtfulness she was used to.

"I'm not sure I've ever encountered _your_ brand of selfishness," he spoke the words slowly, as if plucking them out of a number of other things to say.

"You'll get used to it," she swiped at the salve again. "For instance, it's in my self-interest to make sure your face doesn't look like an umberhulk sat on it."

Valen sighed, but turned his bruised cheek towards her anyway.

He flinched, just slightly, when her fingers met his skin. Neph kept her touch feather-light, applying a thin, even layer over the deep purple lakes mapping his cheekbone and jaw.

She could tell that Valen was chewing over something in his mind — he usually did. Except in battle, when he moved, all instinct. A contrast she was still getting used to.

Head still, he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye as she worked. "What _were_ you made to be?"

"A hero," the words echoed in her mind in Drogan's voice, "or bust."


	5. A sparring match

Valen knew he was near-unstoppable on the battlefield. This was not a case of boastfulness; decades of fighting devils, planars, and Underdark monstrosities has given him an edge not many could match in matters of pure combat. 

However, he was finding it difficult to handle an opponent that seemed to want to mold herself against him instead of succumbing to the very reasonable flight response his flail usually evoked.

And her proximity was... distracting. He knew it was impossible, but he swore he could feel the heat she radiated even through the bulk of his armour. He was hyper-aware of her movements: the way her hair curled along the slope of her cheek as she stepped nimbly around him, how her fingers loosened - then tensed - around the handle of her shortsword right as she went in for a strike, the curve of her neck as it bubbled with laughter when she had him pinned against the wall.

Ah.

His flail seemed to have left his hand at some point during his inventory of his sparring partner, and he was now in the fortunate - unfortunate, definitely unfortunate - position of having his back pressed against the wall and his front against a grinning half-elf.

The blade of her dagger was pressed very gently against the chainmail that wrapped his throat. He smiled inwardly to see that she almost has to stand on tiptoe to reach him. Valen privately found it charming, but he learned from experience that voicing his opinion would provoke Neph to down an enlargement potion and proceed to try and carry him around. Charming in its own right, but also a waste of resources he simply could not abide.

“Looks like this round’s mine, which means next round in the tavern’s on you,” Neph said, still grinning. “Though, it did seem like your heart wasn’t in it.”

“Oh, it very much was, my lady,” Valen said.

He watched curiously as she swallowed before breathing out a laugh.

Then, because he really wanted to see how far he could make her burgeoning blush spread, he ran his tail gently along the outside of her thigh.

The last time he saw someone leap away so fast, they were being catapulted by a particularly cruel pit fiend. He looked over her, worried that he had overstepped, but she caught him with warm, smiling eyes. 

Neph was good at swiping most of her expressions under the rug of an easy grin, but “bashful” didn’t seem to be one of them. Her chuckle was distinctly breathy as she sheathed her blades and dusted herself off.

“Not fair.”

Valen pushed off from the wall, noting with satisfaction that the blush indeed spread across her olive skin all the way to the pointed tips of her ears.

He leaned down towards her slightly as he strode past to collect his flail.

“I will be sure to make it up to you.”

He finally allowed himself the smile as she hid her red face and her laughter in her hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is setting a precedent for the chapters to not be in chronological order but. It's Valentine's!


End file.
